Live at the hungry i [Import, Live]

Now Yarborough's fine tenor and winning personality stand on their own - but perhaps not as well as they once blended with the voices and personalities of Lou Gottlieb and Alex Hassilev as part of the Limeliters.

There's nothing wrong with this fine set of recordings made by Yarborough one night in the mid-1960's at San Francisco's famous "hungry i" nightclub. But folk music, to my prosaic mind, is made up of two types of songs: energetic toe-tappers and slow moving "crooners". I have an overwhelming preference for the toe-tappers, but I understand that you need a variety of greens to make the salad mix correctly.

Yarborough's personality, standing on its own, however genial, is somewhat introspective, and in this selection, he seems to have a preference for the "crooners" (i.e. "How Deep is Down", "Rose", "Only Love"). Of course, there is nothing wrong with the way that he sings these, but I would have preferred a few more "toe tappers". Perhaps the presence of Yarborough's more animated colleagues was needed to invigorate him. And his mischievous sense of humor simply was more entertaining when mixed with the contrasting personalities of Gottlieb and Hassilev.

But this album is especially valuable because of a unique idea that Yarborough carried out while arranging the performances. Radio personality Jack Carney's original introduction to the original LP is included with this CD, and he explains how the audience members at the hungry i were actually invited to participate as background vocalists.

Though Carney insists that this had never been done before, I imagine that Mitch Miller had already done this with younger audiences but that was unquestionably with no intention other than to allow the kids the fun of participation.

And I imagine that this has been done many times since Glenn Yarborough did it here.

But the quality of music that audiences would sing to, or whatever passes for music nowadays, has greatly declined since the 1960's, and Yarborough appears to have undertaken this task as a serious artistic endeavor, rather than just as a means of gratifying his audience, and the result is quite remarkable.

It is incredible that if one takes 25 people off the street and suits them up in baseball attire, he'll have one rotten baseball team. If one takes dozens of people off the street and puts scalpels in their hands, he'll have a staff of rotten doctors. And just look at the politicians that democracy has turned out.

But the rule that massive numbers equal mediocrity doesn't necessarily apply to music. As individuals, the vast majority of us have rotten singing voices, but by God, put a number of us together in a crowd and ask us to start singing and the result really can be something melodic and enjoyable - think of English sports fans - thousands of them - singing in harmony at a football game.

The concept works in this album too - maybe even better in the surrounding of an enclosed nightclub than in an outdoor or indoor stadium. Put the CD on your player, spin to the first song in this collection, "The Music of the World A Turnin'" (the one REALLY GOOD toe-tapper in this collection), and as Carney says, "...well, you listen..."